Audiences of television and radio have demonstrated a demand for greater diversity of programming and greater control over when that programming is available. For over half a century, radio and television stations have provided widespread, nearly non-stop broadcasts of entertainment and informational programming. With the advent of the consumer grade VCR, a tremendous number of shows have been taped by consumers for viewing at a later, more convenient time.
At the same time VCRs were becoming popular, a fledgling cable television industry increased the number of program channels available. From about half a dozen broadcast stations in most television markets, cable television provided anywhere from double to ten times as many choices, almost overnight. As a subscription service, cable television was able to provide recent movies far sooner than advertiser-supported broadcasts. Audiences became accustomed to watching nearly current movies on television.
Households began accumulating personal libraries of favorite shows. Vast libraries of programming were sold into the consumer market. A commercially oriented analog to public libraries abounded, in the form of video rental stores. Nearly any movie made could be found and viewed on one's VCR (and now, DVD player), and most contemporary television series' episodes could be borrowed from someone who had taped them.
Cable, and more recently, satellite television, have provided a large number of potential channels. Competitive pressures have resulted in higher quality general-interest programming, and have induced many companies to carve out their market niche by delivering special interest programs.
Even with all this diversity of available programming, the audience, seemingly insatiable when it comes to variety and convenience, remains unsatisfied.
Video On Demand
Field tests of video-on-demand (VOD) services have abounded, with the ultimate goal of providing every possible program, whenever desired. Video servers, located at cable and Internet head-end offices store the video library of offerings. Subscribers, frequently through a set-top box, navigate a directory of the offerings and direct the remote servers to play a selection.
Though not a VOD product, a related system is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 5,572,442, by Schulhof et al. in the form of a distribution system for audio program materials, nearly audio-on-demand. Schulhof provides a player having a removable storage module. The player would be, for instance, installed in a car. The storage module can be removed from the car, and taken to a docking station having a connection to a network. Through the docking station's connection, audio programming is downloaded from a remote source and stored on the memory module. When the module is restored to the player, the downloaded materials are available for playing.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,930,493, Ottesen et al. have provided a multimedia server suitable for video-on-demand services. The multimedia data are stored in standard compression formats, and the server is able to support a number of concurrent, individually requested show segments.
A system for video-on-demand by Hiroaki Ueda, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,815,194, ensures before sending a video program that the receiving terminal has adequate storage. Billock et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 6,314,575, teach a full featured video-on-demand system that recognizes and differentiates between subscribers and non-subscribers to a service. Everyone is able to view preview clips of shows available on the servers. However, only subscribers have access to the actual shows themselves. Further, when a non-subscriber attempts to access a show, the system solicits the requester to subscribe to the system. This system is particularly adapted to data networks.
The field of video-on-demand systems is quite full, and there are numerous other examples which teach the implementation of multimedia servers.
Personal Video Recorders
A successful stop-gap to the challenges of providing each household with access to the almost limitless library of global television production past and present, has been the personal video recorder (PVR).
A PVR, such as those manufactured by TiVo, Inc. of Alviso, Calif., automates the capture of shows for later playback and has become the preferred method of viewing in many households. The PVR has access to a machine readable television guide, and can search for shows by topic, cast, crew, genre. Identifying viewers' favorites to the PVR, combined with the availability of hundreds of cable or satellite channels and the ability to capture programming around the clock, allows each household to accumulate a personalized, current, and instantly available viewing library, albeit limited to the amount of local storage provided. The content of this personal library is somewhat random, since it can only contain programming that has been aired recently, while not in conflict with another desirable program, and only when storage was available.
Nonetheless, audiences have made themselves clear with their consumer electronics purchases: The shows they want, when they want them.
Cellular Telephones
Another communication technology having achieved widespread availability over half a century ago, is the telephone, which, in the embodiment of the mobile wireless cellular telephone, has sold over half a billion handsets worldwide.
The infrastructure necessary to support cellular telephone handsets is significant and expensive. Even so, the cellular infrastructure initially deployed as an analog technology, has been replaced by a digital one to provide higher voice quality and more reliable operation. In addition, digital services have been added, such as wireless messaging and a degree of Internet access.
Most recently, cellular telephones have entered the next generation of development. Though the investment in these third generation (or 3G) mobile broadband capable systems is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, all is not rosy. Betrand Bidaud of Gartner, an information technology research organization, attributes the severity of the downturn in the telecommunication industry to three simultaneous problems: “One is the economic downturn in the US and the world. Second, is the fact that the forces driving the industry such as internet and cellular services are starting to reach a plateau in most developed markets, meaning that the growth is much slower . . . And third, what is missing is a new innovation that would generate new growth.”
It was expected that non-voice services, such as image exchange and electronic games, newly enabled by high-speed digital communication, would drive adoption of the new iteration. However, that presumed latent demand is yet to materialize. The cellular telephone enhanced services infrastructure is still waiting for its “killer app,” the application which will make 3G cellular phones a must-have product.
There exists an opportunity between the audience's insatiable desire for personalized and readily available information and entertainment, and industry's pending ability to provide ubiquitous cellular access to broadband digital services.
Dedicated Channels vs. Packet Networks
There is a difference in the way that telephones and networked computers operate. The telephone converts the voice of a caller into a stream of electrical impulses. These impulses, which are transmitted immediately to the other telephone conversation participant, or in the case of a conference call, participants. Early telephones used analog electrical techniques, but modern telephone systems digitize the signal, typically at the local exchange. A digitized telephone signal is reconverted to analog at the receiving exchange.
Until relatively recently, a telephone signal was assigned to a physical channel (e.g. specific cables, microwave links, etc.) at the time a call was placed. The assigned channel provided the connection between the stations of the telephone call. To make better use of channel components, multiple telephone signals are multiplexed to allow a cable or microwave link to carry many telephone signals simultaneously. Switching equipment at the originating and terminal exchanges, and often other intermediate locations, select and assign the channel for the call. The bandwidth is dedicated and remains in use throughout the duration of that call.
Packet switched networks, such as the Internet, use a different switching technique. Pieces of data are routed from point-to-point from the originating station to a remote terminal, much as is the signal of a telephone call. However, data are divided into small packets, each provided with information about the destination and independently routed. There is no requirement that the same cable, microwave link, or optical fiber carry every packet. As each packet arrives at each switch, the packet may be instantly routed to the next point, but since the data does not have any bandwidth specifically allocated to it, immediate routing is not assured. If traffic at that switch is too great, the packet may be momentarily stored, until there is sufficient bandwidth becomes available. Alternately, a packet may be routed to a different switch, if the system deems that an alternate route may be available.
Ultimately, on the Internet, some packets may not get delivered. The delivery processes require only a “best effort” level of service, not absolute reliability. If required, messages can be exchanged between the source and destination terminals to confirm receipt, or if necessary, request retransmission of missing packets. Protocols have been developed, such as TCP/IP, to provide just such a reliability mechanism.
Streaming Media
Historically, data was passed over networks as files. A performance, such as a song, would be stored in digitized form as a file on a computer. That file could be sent via a switched network to a second computer. Once it was received, in total, it could be played by software resident on the second computer. File transfer techniques are well understood. Protocol standards such as the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) permit files to be moved among computers even in the presence of an unreliable network. The files are broken up into a sequence of packets, and any packet that gets lost will be identified and resent until every packet has been received accurately and the file is reconstructed.
Such techniques, however, are limited to completed performances. An ongoing performance, for instance a radio show, or a telephone call, require a different approach: The second computer is going to start playing the performance before an end is received. This approach treats media as a continuous stream. It is perfectly reasonable to start playing at any point in the stream, and continue playing indefinitely.
Streaming media technologies have been widely taught. Glaser, et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 5,793,980 and its continuation U.S. Pat. No. 6,151,634, describe an audio-on-demand mechanism for the delivery of audio and accompanying multimedia data via a dial-up or other network connection. Such mechanisms are embodied in the streaming media servers and players by RealNetworks, of Seattle, Wash. Apple Computer, of Cuppertino, Calif. with its QuickTime products, also provides usable streaming media technologies, such as those taught by Batson et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 6,098,126, and Jones et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 6,134,243.
Interactive Voice Response
Pre-recorded telephone messages were initially used to announce an automatic answering machine. Information services, such as time-of-day, provided pre-recorded message elements that were composed by an automatic process.
With the introduction of touch-tone telephones (DTMF technology), systems followed that accepted in-band signaling (the touch-tones) allowing telephone customers to transmit commands or responses that could be understood by a remote machine.
Initially, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems make use of commands and responses that customers provide using touch-tone keys to provide a selection of pre-recorded information messages. IVR system enhancements include synthesized voice and voice recognition. Synthesized voice allows on-the-fly generated data, such as an account balance or computer generated weather report, to be announced; and voice recognition, whereby a caller can speak a command or response, can replace touch-tone commands.
Advanced Conference Calling System
Co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/238401, filed on Sep. 10, 2002 by Weisman et al. and entitled Method and Apparatus for Improved Conference Call Management, is herein incorporated in its entirety by this reference. Weisman teaches a way of managing conference calls that allows individuals to spontaneously initiate or join existing conference calls based on subject and/or proximity, and yet collectively retain sufficient control so as to keep the social environment manageable.